The Children Star (34 page)

(Then we discovered an amazing thing: The alien world had intelligent feelings. You could, in fact, understand us, responding to our most intimate desires. And most astounding of all, you came from the stars, like the very gods. It is a wondrous thing, to inhabit a god.)

In the laboratory, with the Secretary beside him, Rod eyed the culture dish, a bauble of nanoplast connected to a dozen ports of gases and nutrients. Khral adjusted a connection, not looking at him.

“Are you sure we can't just take the culture down to Prokaryon?” asked Rod. “They've lasted this long.”

“They need constant adjustment of oxygen and temperature,”
Khral explained. “If I disconnect the culture, they'll die outright.”

“The whirrs can't carry them?”

“A whirr is like an ambulance. It's well equipped, but you wouldn't want to spend months in one; you'd starve. Remember, the micromen live on a faster time scale.”

“But these have never been inside a human,” said Rod. “What if they're too sick to adjust to me?”

“Your own micromen seem to think they can stabilize their ‘brothers' and keep them from dying off before we find a tumbleround.”

The Secretary touched his arm. “I'm convinced we'll impress your alien inhabitants with our humanitarian gesture. Once they're willing to listen, we can get them to agree to stay out of human bodies.”

“The transfer will have side effects, but we'll protect you.” Khral placed a nanoplastic patch on his neck. “The patch will send nanoservos into your blood, to keep your fever down when so many foreign visitors are transferred.” Then she took a vial of whirrs and opened it into a connecting tube to the culture. As the valve turned, the whirrs swarmed into the culture, presumably picking up as many micromen as they could. Rod felt his scalp prickle. But the worst was yet to come.

“Vacuum suction,” Khral called to the culture system. The whirrs immediately were sucked up back into the vial, which sealed itself as she removed it. Her hand shook slightly as she turned to Rod. “This may be easier if you don't look.”

Rod looked away, his face turned to stone. He felt the round pressure of the vial against his skin, but surprisingly nothing more. Those whirrs certainly knew how to avoid irritating their host.

GREETINGS. WE WELCOME OUR BROTHERS.

Hush
, Rod told the letters flashing before his eyes.
This will be hard enough
.

“I've known many brave men,” said the Secretary, “but none more than you. Well, Khral—are we ready?”

“Titer check,” Khral called to the culture vessel. “Looks like a few left behind; we'll repeat the procedure, then we're done.” She looked to the Secretary. “I'll go down to the planet with him. If he runs a fever or anything, I can take care of it.”

“Very well,” said Secretary Verid. “You all understand—absolute secrecy.”

“We'll take the old servo shuttle, so Quark needn't answer questions. It's been fixed up,” Khral assured Rod.

The stripes of wheelgrass loomed through the window. It seemed so familiar, yet utterly strange to be returning to Prokaryon. So much that had been a mystery was now explained. Rod knew, now, who made the wheelgrass grow in bands; he knew, far better than he cared to, how Prokaryon's true masters governed the beasts that grazed the rows, never picking off so much as a shoot of a singing-tree in the forest. Yet despite how much had changed, within himself he could not shake off the sense that he was going home, and the loss of home ached all the more.

Khral pointed to the viewport. “There, near the river where the forest starts—I see a herd of four-eyes.” Several of the tire-shaped beasts were grazing.

“The micromen wanted a tumbleround, remember.” The tumbleround had always been their preferred host; yet now, the micromen that had grown up inside him seemed to like an alien human even better. How could that be?

Seconds later the craft landed, more gently than it used
to. It must have been fixed up well this time, Rod thought hopefully. Then he remembered, there was no more colony to need it.

The ginger wind blew across his face as he stepped down. Khral had activated her skinsuit, and Rod remembered that she was not even lifeshaped for Prokaryon. “You can stay here,” he told her. If she slipped and the suit failed, there was no help anywhere, not another human or sentient on the planet.

“Bother.” Khral stepped down amidst the wheelgrass. She always looked prettiest in her skinsuit, the sunlight sparkling from every curve. Rod recalled happier days, when the scientists went collecting singing-tree pods and watching the light show in the upper canopy; as it turned out, all telecommunications of the micromen. What had those little people thought of them, he wondered, these great human beasts lumbering through their forest, chopping off great hunks of their habitat to haul off in vessels unimaginably large.

Now, though, they had to find a tumbleround and get their errand done. Finding a tumbleround was not so easy, Rod realized with chagrin. Before, he had spent so much energy getting rid of them, but now he had no idea where to go look for one. “We might try the forest,” he guessed. “I think they prefer the shade.”

Khral nodded, the creases of nanoplast winking around her neck. She hiked with him toward the forest, where the first singing-trees arched overhead, loops upon loops of branches reaching outward. She stopped. “We shouldn't go too far; you'll tire out. Why not stay in one place, and let the whirrs find us.”

Rod leaned into the arch of a singing-tree, stretching his back. In the loops of the upper branches the wind sang,
and helicoids clattered among themselves. The planet would be saved from destruction, Verid had said. Suddenly he felt very good; there was hope after all, and he was doing his part. “How is the lab?” he asked. “Are you making progress with the language?”

Khral rested next to him. “We figured out a lot, until Sarai went into whitetrance. Now we can't wake her. One of your children could wake her, but Station said it wasn't right.”

“For a change.”

“And 'jum won't talk either, but I suspect that's just 'jum. You know her.”

“All too well,” he admitted.

“Damn that Station,” Khral exclaimed. “If only she were more tactful.”

“You can't blame her. After seeing what I went through, why should she let anyone help the micromen learn to live within nanoplast?”

Khral turned to him. “Rod—I can't bear that it happened to you. I wish it was me, or anyone else in the world.”

Rod shrugged. “It had to be someone.”

“Not you. You're the only man who ever looked at me like a human woman.”

Startled, he looked at her. Was he that transparent, all this time? But the weakness that he despised, she praised. Her skinsuited face was so near; her eyes held him, until he thought he would fall in. He wanted to tell her something, but somehow could not find the words. He lifted his hand and caressed the nanoplast on her cheek.

Khral adjusted something on her suit. Its voice squeaked, “Suit alert, suit alert! You're in danger!”

“Hush,” whispered Khral. “I've begun lifeshaping; I'll
survive an hour.” The suit slowly peeled, flowing down her face and shoulders, into a puddle of nanoplast at her feet. Her face was clear, her lips near enough to taste.

Rod felt the blood pound in his ears. He thought, I am a free man, not a llama; I will freely choose.

As he met her lips, her arms were around him, her fingers alighting on his back, the nape of his neck. He shuddered as her touch set him on fire. His hands remembered how to slip the clothes off as quickly as possible. Beneath his hands a fine fur covered her back, but her breasts were bare. She pressed herself to him, wanting him so badly, he prayed he could last long enough to please her. Nothing else existed; they were one, alone in the universe.

Afterward they lay quiet together in the wheelgrass. The wind swept over them, and far overhead a flock of helicoids cried as they took off from a singing-tree. Rod let out a sigh of peace and despair.
“Spirit forgive me,”
he whispered.

He felt tears from her eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Was it good, Rod?”

Rod did not want to say how good. He would not fear the micromen again. He pressed her hair. “You are a beautiful woman.”

“I knew it would be good. Oh, Rod—if we ever get out of all this, let me take care of you. I earn good pay, enough for you and any number of kids.”

“Khral. Would you trust a lifelong vow from a man who just broke one?”

Her face crumpled. “I hadn't thought of it that way.” She looked at the starstone, lying cold on his chest. “Will you have to leave all those children?”

Rod nearly blacked out to think of it. Let the micromen come; their torments would drown his pain.

“How can it be,” she whispered. “How can something that feels so right be so wrong?”

Something more than the wind brushed his arm. Several whirrs had come to settle, their tiny propellers humming.

“They're here at last,” said Khral. “They'll take your sick micromen now.”

Rod eyed the whirrs with suspicion. “The micromen—they were waiting for us.” It was bad enough to break his vow, without a million “people” watching.

“They're good biologists,” said Khral. “I'm sure they wanted to know how humans do it.” She caught his arm as he started to rise. “Don't exert yourself. There will be lots of traffic in your bloodstream, new ones arriving and old ones leaving. Your immune system won't like it; you may run a fever.”

New ones arriving—that was not part of the bargain, he thought. He lay back, watching the loopleaves flutter in the wind, trying not to think at all about anything. A scent of glue reached him. “Is the tumbleround there?”

“I see one, a ways off, in the arch of that tree.” Khral pointed, her arm outstretched across her breast. She sat up, retrieving her clothes and her skinsuit.

In his eyes appeared something bright that was not sunlight. Closing his eyes, Rod found the message. WELL DONE. OUR BROTHERS WILL LIVE.

Rod sat up. “They say they're done. We can go now.” As he started to pull on his shirt, an unwelcome sense of pleasure entered his brain. “
No
,” he said aloud, squeezing his eyes hard shut.
“I said, no rewards.”

HOW DO WE THANK YOU FOR SAVING A WORLD?

He blinked, then laughed aloud.

“What's going on?”

“Nothing, only my own foolish words. Let's go.” He
was starting to run a fever, but he could walk to the shuttle.

“I'll get lifeshaped,” Khral promised. “If it takes ten years I will. We'll be forever studying this place.”

Rod said nothing. Lifeshaping looked easy, next to the choice that faced him now.

D
eep inside 'jum, the sisterlings danced. The little rings danced in intricate patterns, three crossing five and five crossing seven. Red and orange, yellow and blue, their paths wove to and fro, all the while blinking in songs that 'jum could not follow. (What about you,)
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1,
they called. (Do you dance? Do the gods dance, too?)

'jum wondered. The Spirit Children never seemed to dance. Why not?

Outside her, some useless grown-up was trying to bother her again.

Take me with you
,
1 0 0 3 7,
she told the sisterlings.
Show me how to dance
.

(You are a god, and you must dance with gods. But never fear, we will always be dancing inside.) The patterns shifted, and the pulsing circles receded into the dark. 'jum longed to follow, but she could not.
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
—(to
dance, we need to eat. You must eat for us, so eat good food. Remember azetidine . . .)

A powerful, insistent odor penetrated her mind. Gradually she was roused to the outer world, where she saw and smelled a dish of figs. The figs were overripe, just like the ones her family used to serve in the old days, before they died one by one and her mother became Sarai. The dish was held by a small woman, a stranger dressed in a brownish Elysian talar. 'jum was confused. A dish familiar enough to bring tears, held by such a strange woman.

“It's all right, dear,” the woman spoke soothingly. “Tell her, Station.”

“You may eat the food,” Station's voice boomed. “You may address your visitor as Honorable Secretary.”

“Never mind, dear,” said the stranger, “ ‘Nana' will do. Go ahead, eat.”

'jum was powerfully hungry, but she remembered what
1 0 0 3 7
desired. “Azetidine,” she said. “I want azetidine and mimosin. And I need extra arsenic.”

The Secretary looked up.

Station said, “She can have those, they won't hurt her; she's been lifeshaped.”

“Very well,” said the Secretary, “but eat this, too.”